On Tuesday, I learned that French Elle is running an issue with multiple photographs of famous women (Monica Bellucci, Eva Herzigova) without any makeup or airbrushing. Over the next few days, I read several articles about the subject throughout the blogosphere, from Feministing to Bitch to Jezebel to NBC (which noted that the issue made it, ahem, “peeing-in-pants time over at ladyblog Jezebel”).

I tend to look at this issue from a women’s health standpoint — specifically, how the unrealistic images that run rampant in fashion magazines and other women’s magazines can have an impact on the real, flesh-and-blood girls and women who see these pictures. They don’t have a personal Photoshop artist touching up their “flaws” every five minutes, nor do they need one. But the print media’s orgy of airbrushing sends the message that it would be tragic if anyone were see a female face or body in its natural, “untouched” state. So waists and thighs are whittled, and “back fat” is shaved off with a few clicks of the mouse. And girls and women decide they will do the same to their own bodies, not with computers but with eating disorders.

Before anyone gets all riled up and thinks I’m writing a piece about how the evil media and fashion industry nefariously cause eating disorders, let me tell you to save your agita for something else. I’m (on a good day) a recovering anorexic/bulimic who understands the complex interplay of factors — genetic, familial, societal — that accompany these diseases. But there is a specific correlation between these magazines and eating disorders, and that is through the rabbit hole known as “pro-anorexia” and its offshoot “thinspiration.” I have a little too much personal knowledge about such things, and it’s something that I hesitate to admit here.

I am not going to go into the details of my eating disorder history in this post. What I will say is that because of that history, I am intimately acquainted with the ramifications of our culture of “retouching” images. In the spring of 2006 I had just been released from a hospital, furious at everyone who had put me there, and desperate to get back to where I thought I wanted to be, i.e. emaciated. With everyone watching me like a hawk, I found that I could switch on my computer and easily find a community of other women and girls (and a few men and boys) who were aiming for the same thing that I was.

(I am issuing a trigger warning here for any readers who might be upset by some very frank discussion of eating disorders. Note that no weights or measurements will be given.)

Immediately, I began to notice that members were posting what they called “thinspiration” which was often shortened to “thinspo”. What is thinspiration? My personal definition is Thinspiration (noun): starvation/purgation motivation. It could take several forms, but the most common were photos of models and celebrities from glossy magazine pictures. For those who think that you can only use these pictures as “motivation” if you are unaware that they are fake and hence not really any bellwether for your own goals, that is not the case. In its way, that knowledge is especially pernicious, ast sends the message that even those women who are touted as being the “most beautiful” are still flawed and need fixing. If Halle Berry can’t escape the wrath of the retouching artist’s perfectionism, what hope is there for the rest of us? Hence the siren call to focus on a self-improvement that is really self-destruction.

Everyone in my pro-anorexia group knew they were retouched to high heaven. But at a certain point, what passes for rational logic among those not dealing with these diseases ceases to be a factor to the girls and boys trying to brutally reshape their bodies. I certainly knew that the avatar of one of my online friends was an extremely photoshopped picture of Gisele Bundchen — not photoshopped by Vogue‘s standards, but a retouching on someone’s own computer program so that it looked like the supermodel’s likeness was refracted through a funhouse mirror. But I was so wrapped up in my sickness that I didn’t care about the fact it was airbrushed; all I could focus on were the visible ribs and the arm with the thickness and muscle tone of an asparagus stalk. This picture was not what the model looked like in real life, or even in Vogue, but my friends were doing their own airbrushing, just like the magazines were, and it seemed a perfectly normal thing to do. We stared at those pictures day after day, happy that we use computers to fashion people’s bodies into the most wraithlike figures possible, in the hopes that our own bodies would follow suit.

It took a long time for me to pull myself away from the pro-anorexia group. And yes, that group is exactly what it sounds like. It pretended to be a safe haven for people with eating disorders, but really was a giant circle where one member’s loss would spur another on to outdo her, and so on and so on ad infinitum. I told my (too nosy for my tastes back then) family that it was a peer support group. In one sense, that was true. There were certainly multiple times when I had desires to self-injure that were defused by a group member talking me out of it via private message. But I never was able to believe it was any kind of healthy enterprise. It was a secret club, a no-healthy-people-allowed club, where we swapped our stats (height, weight, measurements, BMI, goal weights) and cheered one another on to keep starving.

It’s hard to write this without getting very emotional. After the advent of time, therapy, and hopefully maturity, I am deeply ashamed of the fact that I participated in such a destructive activity. I cheered others on as they ravaged their bodies in the same way I ravaged mine. I am embarrassed to admit that I still have my thinspiration journal somewhere in my apartment, and I even used it as my work notebook at my last job. Why admit it at all? Because it’s something that encapsulates my unending push-pull of wanting to be a good, healthy person and wanting to be self-destructive. I have thought so many times about throwing away that journal, but when I cleaned out my desk upon leaving that job earlier this year, I still took the notebook home with me.

I cannot pretend to be recovered, and some days I don’t feel like recovering at all. In some ways the journal is the best representation of that. I could easily chuck it in the trash. But then a tiny voice says…

“What if you want to go back to the way you were before? When you were x number of pounds and felt amazing?”

Reality intrudes and I remember I didn’t actually feel amazing, as it’s hard to feel that way when your body is literally crumbling. That is not enough to stop the tiny voice that is telling me that one day I will still want that journal. And so I keep it. And I am ashamed.

But maybe there is hope after all. Yesterday I got rid of something far more significant than the journal. I took my beloved/hated scale Janus (yes, I named my scale) to my therapist’s office. It was in a reusable shopping bag and I sobbed as I handed it over. I cried harder when I got back home, realizing that when I got up today I would no longer be able to weigh myself twelve times before even having my morning coffee. This is, of course, the best thing in the long run. At the moment, however, it feels like torture, like walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon with no net to catch me.

I am sure that at some point today, I will walk past a newsstand. French Elle will not be on sale, but any number of heavily retouched magazines will be. The knowledge that Jennifer Garner (on the cover of InStyle), Drew Barrymore (on the cover of Elle), or Liya Kebede (one of several models on the cover of Vogue) have been airbrushed will not make any difference; they are still right there, embodying the ironclad mainstream beauty ideals that are thrust at women everywhere.

And inevitably, some of us grab onto this message in a desperate attempt to bring some semblance of order and control to our lives. But what starts as a bid for power over our own selves ends up going off the rails. We retouch, retouch, retouch, and retouch some more, until there is nothing left but the need to keep altering our selves, forever and ever, airbrushing into oblivion unless we can get a hold on something solid and true.

25 Responses to “Airbrushed Into Oblivion: A Rant/Overshare”

Thank you for the post, Sarah. It’s funny how we keep these things: I still have my hospital bracelet too. I did finally manage, after several attempts, to stop going to my site of choice. A few years later, I tried to go back and saw it had been shut down. A good thing, too.

The worst part of those groups and message boards etc. for me was that I was grateful for the solidarity but at the same time it was so competitive. The care and support were totally contingent on a continued commitment to weight loss at any price, but at the same time I knew the other people there understood me better than the people who would have preferred I partake in a healthier enterprise.

@kithkin @Rebecca: On some level, I wish I was alone only because I would not wish this on anyone. On another level, it is comforting to know that others can relate and understand, and their encouragement to recover comes from a very genuine place. Thanks, and I really wish you boast the very best. It is such a toxic disease to struggle with — anorexia, bulimia, COE, all of it.

proud of you, you know. and wish i had the nerve to do what you’ve done. threw out all of my hospital memorabilia, but do still find myself checking old friends’ photos on facebook from time to time when feeling esp. crappy about myself. it’s hard to think, 16 years into this, that it could ever really go away, but i guess it’s just day by day.
love you!

Thank you for sharing Sarah. I hope that others who need this, find this, and find inspiration in your words and you can provide them hope on their own roads to recovery. What you just did was an important feminist act. Brava.

Sarah, that was awesome. I know it was tough to write, but that was really…awesome. And brave and thoughtful and stuff.

I’ve never had an eating disorder. But I also do not own a scale and I try to stay away from the one at the gym. Not owning a scale is a deliberate choice on my part because I know that if I did I would be tempted to weigh myself constantly and fret about any ups and downs (“I had a huge dinner last night! And dessert! OMG, I weigh a pound more. Only salad today!”).

There is just no escaping the “thinner is better” bullshit. It’s so pervasive and poisonous and it requires so much effort not to get sucked in.

@GeekGirlsRule: It is a struggle absolutely every day, and yes, it always seems easier to slip back into it. Which is ironic, given that it is so much work to keep to these “habits” every day. My heart and support go out to you.

@alli: I am so glad you commented on this, honey. And yes, after 16 years (wow, same for me…) it feels like such an ingrained piece of my identity that it becomes “If I’m not an anorexic, who am I?”

@Becky: Thanks. You know how terrified I was that this was actually going to piss people off! Weird expectations FTW.

What a powerful piece of writing. I have never had an eating disorder but, like many women, the way I think about my body can seem pretty disordered at times.

I have often found it difficult to articulate the ‘harm’ of highly airbrushed and altered images. This may sound odd, but I often find myself taking a similar position to the one I take on porn: the often unpopular assertion that these pictures affect people’s perceptions of women and how we judge their bodies, their sexual prowess, their desires, their boundaries etc etc

Thank you for writing this piece. It is extremely compelling evidence that the images that these magazines promote as beautiful and desirable have real-life consequences.

I hope you don’t mind if I share this article with others. I think it’s something that needs to be read and understood by as many people as possible.

I’ve been travelling the last month and haven’t really been online, and this is the first post I’ve read coming back–and what a post! I really admire your courage in sharing. I had an ED when I was in my teens, which I luckily feel as if I’ve overcome, but I can still relate to a lot here.

A little related story: I was recently in a Turkish bath, where you had to be stark naked in front of strangers, and it was such a frightening experience still–but after the first minute or so, totally liberating, because there were all these people, and they looked just like me, some fatter, some skinnier, some prettier, some not. But here’s the thing: that was all totally unimportant. No one gave a shit. Made me start thinking that if we could all just deal with nakedness and the body in a more matter-of-fact way, these things would be so much easier. If I had seen more fat old ladies naked when I was a kid, I bet I wouldn’t have been as set on getting as thin as Nicole Richie…

@endora: I think some of it also has to do with Puritan attitudes about nudity in this country. Naked bodies are inherently dirty, so if we must see one, it should be one that is at least “pleasing” to the conventional notions of beauty.

@Sarah: exactly! I’ve lived in the US and UK and think it’s a problem in both those countries, and it really influenced me (although a Catholic upbringing didn’t help). I definitely thought of my body as dirty and sinful–and something to be ignored, if not destroyed.

The attitude in Germany started to help me relax a bit and accept the naturalness of my body, but unfortunately, it is getting worse and worse there too… up until a few years ago, Brazilians were unheard of, for example, but now you are starting to hear about people getting them…damn Sex and the City.

A thought I had regarding the “if I’m not anorexic, who am I” problem–I think one of the reasons I clung so tightly to my eating disorder was that I could blame anything and everything on it if I chose. I could hide behind it, use it as a shield.

If I felt like someone was criticizing me, I could blame it on the fact that I was “fat”, instead of trying to see if there was truth in their words.

I certainly remember wearing my red bracelet as a reminder not to eat in solidarity with other “pro-ana”s. I’m so glad those days are over; at least when I’m having an episode of binge type disordered eating I’m not ready to pass out all the time.

[...] I know that I will contrast them with the supportive comments my fellow Harpy sarah.of.a.lesser.god deservedly got on her ED post. I know that someone will say, “The important thing is health,” as if I didn’t [...]

I myself am an almost recovered anorexic – I still feel the pull on bad days, or when I feel trapped in certain circumstances (an abusive boyfriend I used to have is one), but I am on a healthy weight and have been so for over two years, now. (and, on a side note: I am happy with that weight, too. My skin especially is so much softer, now)

I just wanted to tell you what I did in combating my eating disorder…

1. I visited someone who would talk to me, briefly, and then give me a chakra-based massage, usually lasting for about one and a half hours. regulating my breathing and feeling my body in its most direct sense, unmediated by mirrors or scales was liberating.
2. I quit reading magazines. Except those of political or academic relevance, of course.
3. I quit, for a time, watching television. I would make exceptions for British comedies and documentaries, though. but no american next top model for me (or anything american, really)